Tomodachi Life: Your Friends, Your Drama, Your Heteronormative Life.

With the recent gay-marriage mishap that surfaced from Nintendo's Tomodachi Life glitch, this article focuses on these issues while taking an informative and considerate approach to both the technical and cultural difficulties that surfaced with such a touchy political issue. The article provides a personal account to better explain to the audience why this detail of the game has become such an explosive topic, and goes on to recount other shortcomings brought on by Nintendo, touching on old racial issues.
(3DS, Culture, Nintendo, Tomodachi Life)

It would help if people were at least honest. Nintendo's worst "crime" here was leaving out gay relationships in the first place. And now people are attacking them for trying not to get involved. It's stupid.

I personally am against any form of animal cruelty. If there are any meat or dairy based consumables in this game I think their should be moral outrage that the vegan community has not been properly represented.

I can see where you would think a comparison like that was made but my point was that not every persons feelings can be respected.

What matters is a controversy like that this is the intent of the accused and I do not believe that the intent of nintendo was to act in a homophobic way, or out of hate and ignorance even if that is the perceived end result.

I would never actively compare homosexuals to vegans as your correct that doesn't make much sense. I do however believe that if we made a game with every group included it would just be a plank page.

these days everything gets blown out of proportion. What a huge controversy that is, developers not including gay marriages...

It's not a real life sim and even if it was its impossible to model everything lifelike. Imagine you implemented gay marriages and wouldn't do it right, what a shitstorm that gets you...

Why deliver such a game to the western audience in the first place? they clearly don't appreciate all the work the developers put into this and moan about every little bullshit aspect that is not gender conform to someones crazy mindset.

If gay marriage were implemented then Nintendo would be making a social statement. If gay marriage isn't included, LGBT says they are making a social statement. Both situations are doing something incorrectly.

Representation should be the responsibility of those who wish to be represented (exceptions include government), not people who aren't part of the group.

you said it was just a little implementation detail, but you have to be careful nonetheless. If characters in that game are marrying just on paper you might be right, but what if they do it in a mosque? And being at that, if they are marrying in a mosque (or something looking like a mosque, which surely is biased towards one religion), what about other religions? Who is marrying them anyway? An imam or a priest surely would not marry two persons of same sex. What about polygamies? Is it ok that only two people can marry each other? What about age restrictions? Why are underage forced marriages not included anyway? They are ok in some countries, surely they must feel underrepresented.

To make it conform you basically have to strip off every real life aspect that might evoke conflicting views. So best would be to not include marriages at all, which would be very sad. Or else there will always be a party that feels underrepresented and is calling for attention by defaming a good game.

I agree that everyone should feel represented but surely they shouldn't be an uproar whenever somebody is not. I mean you have straight, gay, bi sexual, pan sexual, omni sexual. People of all colors, creeds and every possible mix. Prudish people, exabitionists, pacifists, people who like to cross dress the list goes on and on and on.

There are so many different groups of people that you can't possibly cater to everyone and if you begin to suggest that some groups are bigger than others you come to the dangerous road of suggesting one group is more important than another.

If one group isn't responsible for representing themselves then who is? Because if nintendo Sony and Microsoft take up the mantle of representing everyone nothing will ever get done through offending somebody.

But see, representation can only truly occur correctly when the group works to represent themselves. Support isn't the same as representation. Heterosexuals can support representation, but they can't implement it because they can't relate to it.

I'm a straight white male. I don't know what it's like to be a woman, a different ethnicity, or part of the LGBT community. Would you trust me to represent you (I'm assuming you're part of the LGBT community considering the tone of your comment) equal to or better than you'd be able to represent yourself?

Omg lets all burn them at the stake because all of Nintendo is homophobic. /s it's 2014, we get it, everyone is sensitive to everything and if you aren't you're obviously a terrible person and beneath even the simplest feeling of empathy. Please, move on.